Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Although the use of models has come to dominate much of the scientific study of politics, our understanding of the role or function that models play in the scientific enterprise has not kept pace. Political science clings to an outdated theory-based approach to scientific inference known as hypothetico-deductivism. We argue for a new approach to scientific inference that highlights the centrality of models in scientific reasoning, avoids the pitfalls of the hypothetico-deductive method, and offers political scientists a new way of thinking about the relationship between the natural world and the models with which we are so familiar.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: There is an abundant literature on globalization and the state, with particular attention paid to whether the state is being undermined by globalization. Yet in much of this literature, there is minimal attention paid to adopting and articulating a theoretically strong, analytically nuanced, theory of the state. Globalization scholars need to adopt more articulate theories of the state in order to more fruitfully address the important questions of the state and globalization. Two examples of state theory, constructivism and pluralism, are applied to the question of globalization and the state here, with the hope that the divergence and nuance that result in such preliminary pairings will encourage more careful attention to state theory in future work on globalization.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper assesses how well four theoretical approaches--which emphasize external pressure, rational learning, cognitive heuristics, and symbolic imitation--can account for the diffusion of innovations across countries in its three distinctive characteristics, namely its wave-like character, its geographic concentration, and its creation of similarity amid diversity. The cognitive-psychological approach, which invokes the heuristics of availability, representativeness, and anchoring, emerges as most persuasive.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: What accounts for the waves of policy diffusion that increasingly sweep across regions of the world? Why do many diverse countries adopt similar changes? Based on evidence from the spread of Chilean-style pension privatization in Latin America, this paper assesses the relative merit of four competing theoretical explanations that scholars of diffusion have proposed. As the mechanism driving the spread of innovations, these approaches emphasize external pressures, emanating especially from international financial institutions; the quest for symbolic or normative legitimacy; rational learning and cost-benefit calculation; and cognitive shortcuts and heuristics, respectively. The paper assesses which one of these frameworks can best account for the three distinctive features of diffusion, namely, its wave-like temporal pattern; its geographical clustering; and the spread of similarity amid diversity. Drawing on pattern matching and process tracing, the paper concludes that the cognitive-psychological framework offers a particularly persuasive account.